The Mystery of the Venus Island Fetish Read online

  Not being expert in the amphibia, Vere Griffon suspected the old man of possessing a foul mouth. But on that day nothing could have dispelled his joy. For here, at last, was a truly worthy addition to the institution’s holdings. One that, when studied and described in full, would carry the museum’s name—and its director’s reputation—into the glorious annals of scientific achievement.

  Archie’s own joy would have been unalloyed if it were not for one thing. Beatrice was not there to witness his triumph. She had taken annual leave to visit her family up country. Nobody knew when she would be back. He’d considered visiting her, but thoughts of her stern uncle, along with Dithers’ advice to give her time, saw him procrastinate.

  Amid all the hubbub, the director’s gaze was soon fixed on a group of workers who were pulling apart a tall wooden scaffold. The prow of a magnificent war canoe could be seen emerging from the timbers. It was exquisitely carved and at least eight feet high, the wood blackened and decorated along its outside edge with hundreds of white egg-cowry shells. But what really caught Vere Griffon’s eye was the figure crowning it. It was a homunculus, whose oversized head was resting in its hands. The thing was so expertly inlaid with mother-of-pearl that it could have been the work of the finest Renaissance craftsman.

  ‘That headhunting canoe, Meek, is of a most superior type!’ Griffon enthused. ‘It could seat thirty paddlers, I’d guess, and the figurehead is the finest I’ve seen. It would make a splendid centrepiece for a gallery of Pacific Cultures. And it may help in gaining Mrs Gordon-Smythe’s support. Congratulations on securing it! I just hope you didn’t pay too much, funding being what it is.’

  ‘Well done, old chap,’ shouted Dithers as he held aloft the stuffed skin of a rather large rat. ‘The Mus carnivorans. We don’t have one in the collection, and this is the largest and most perfect specimen I’ve ever seen. Professor Stein in Berlin will be green with envy!’

  By late afternoon the unpacking of the major items was complete, and Archie was left alone to sort the smaller objects. One of the last crates he opened was filled with fish and marine molluscs. It contained that rarest of shellfish, the golden cowrie. He wanted desperately to show it to Sopwith, but the old man was probably already at the Maori’s Head. So he told Jeevons to let Eric know that an item of interest awaited him in the anthropology store. That way the old fellow could drop by at his earliest convenience.

  Just one job remained before an exhausted Archie Meek could head home, and it was a messy one. The pickled fish had to be transferred from their temporary jars into permanent ones.

  By the time Archie had finished it was almost eight o’clock. He was exhausted but also exhilarated. It really had been his great day. He had been back less than a week, and already he was the museum’s golden boy. Even Vere Griffon had looked upon him with new respect. If he had passed the rites of manhood during his initiation in the Venus Islands, then here in the museum he had passed the rites of passage that mark one as suitable for promotion to curator.

  When he got home there was no sign of Dithers. He was doubtless attending a meeting of the Society for the Preservation of Native Animals. Archie negotiated his way around the chaos, climbed into bed, and slept the sleep of the blessed.

  When Archie awoke at dawn, Dithers was still snoozing. Archie dressed quietly, slipped out of the room and returned to the museum. It was well before opening hour, but he was eager to examine once more the haul of treasures he’d secured. He roused Jeevons, who was snoring in his guard box, and gained entry. He slipped through the wide doors of the anthropology department’s unpacking area, and was surprised to see Eric Sopwith, bent over a crate on the floor.

  ‘Ah, Eric. Didn’t expect to see you here so early! What do you make of that golden cowrie, eh?’

  Eric neither replied nor rose to meet him. Archie walked to his friend and looked into his face. Sopwith’s skin was even more liverish than usual, and a gobbet of drool extended from the corner of his open mouth. The old man was, at the very least, not well.

  A half-drained museum specimen jar, its lid removed, was on the floor beside the crate. The head of a pickled fish poked into the air. At seventy per cent proof, preserving alcohol is more powerful even than the navy’s renowned hospital rum. It was not unknown for museum curators to develop a taste for it.

  ‘My God, you’ve really been on a bender this time, haven’t you?’ Archie said. He tried to lift the curator to his feet. But Eric would not cooperate. He was as stiff as a board.

  The young man was shaking uncontrollably as he ran back to the guard’s room. ‘Help,’ he bellowed. ‘Get a doctor! It’s Sopwith. In the anthropology store. Dead!’

  Archie was so upset that he could not stay in the museum. He walked round and round the block, then into Woolloomooloo. North of William Street the usual toughs were loitering by lampposts, while a few sharp-looking men in suits sat at tables outside terrace houses that might have been sly grog shops. Their faces were hard. One fellow had a fresh scar running from his left eye to his chin and the most chilling blue eyes Archie had ever seen. Archie turned up Crown Street into Darlinghurst, where he ran into Dithers, who was strolling to work.

  ‘Good God, old chap!’ Dithers exclaimed. ‘You look half frightened to death! What were you doing in the loo? Not really safe these days, you know. Let’s have a cup of tea before we go into work, and you can tell me all about it.’

  Over a cup of sweet, milky tea, Archie told Dithers about Sopwith.

  When he had finished, Dithers sat silent for a moment, then said, ‘He was the best of men, Archie. Gentle, kind and generous. But we all had our suspicions. The preserving alcohol in molluscs was disappearing far too quickly for evaporation to be the only cause. Honestly, I don’t know how anybody could drink the stuff. It’s so full of formaldehyde and the stench of shellfish that it would put a dead man off. And he’d begun saying strange things, almost raving at times. He was nervous as well. Looking back, I think he feared that the museum was onto him, and that he’d be turned out on his ear. You know, Archie, once you start drinking that stuff, it kills you pretty quickly. He probably only had months left, in any case.’

  ‘Bless you, Courtenay, for trying to ease my conscience,’ Archie replied. ‘But I can’t help feeling responsible. If only I hadn’t told Jeevons to let him know about the golden cowrie.’

  ‘Come on. You’ve nothing to reproach yourself for, Archie. You’ve done the right thing.’

  Dithers rose and placed a few pennies on the table. By the time the pair reached the museum the ambulance carrying Sopwith’s body was pulling out of the courtyard. The mood was sombre, and as Archie walked by people fell silent. A golden boy indeed, he said to himself.

  At his desk, Archie did not know what to do or think. He absent-mindedly picked up the latest issue of the journal Eugenics. Among its offerings was an article tracing the ancestry of the editor back to Roman times—through the male line. The Venus Islanders would have laughed at that, he mused, cuckoldry being what it is. At least the islanders were realistic about such things. And from the United States came another article proposing the sterilisation of the mentally feeble. It was a barbaric piece which claimed, among other things, that the American Negro was of subnormal intelligence. Disgusting, Archie thought. No, not just disgusting. Delusional.

 
; Even these distractions could not shift the focus of his thought. What had Sopwith told him? The director had gone mad. Curators were disappearing. Were these just the ravings of a man in the grip of delirium tremens? Or…what? And whose skulls were they on the fetish—those four orange ones? Could his suspicions be true? Could they be Polkinghorne, Hadley, Jones and Dolt? Buck teeth like those were a rarity, that’s for sure.

  Then it struck him: what if Sopwith’s death hadn’t been accidental. What if he’d been killed to shut him up?

  Chapter 9

  Vere Griffon tried to form his features into the sort of saintly, caring look that he imagined was appropriate in the presence of a corpse. His friend, the state pathologist Dr Leopold Upton, had greeted him warmly at the city morgue. Griffon had known him since their student days. Neat, mustachioed and discreet, Upton was, despite his profession, perhaps the most clubbable man in Sydney. Now the pathologist wore the solemn expression of one about to deliver bad news.

  ‘All signs are consistent with poisoning, I’m afraid, Vere.’ Upton and Griffon were standing in a cold room, and in front of them lay the body of Eric Sopwith, stretched out, arms by his side. A long criss-cross of coarse stitches held together an incision that stretched from groin to neck.

  ‘Can’t be sure without more tests, of course, but it looks very much like fugu poisoning. The active substance is found in the liver of toadfish. Quite a common species in the Pacific. Only the Japanese make a habit of eating it. Sometimes the sushi knife touches the liver—that’s all it takes to see a diner off. Ran across a few cases in Tokyo during the international pathology conference in ’26. The only question is, was it accidental or deliberate? I’m sorry, Vere, but the police will have to be called in.’

  ‘Don’t suppose it could have been alcoholic poisoning?’ asked Griffon. ‘He was our crapulous curator, after all.’

  ‘Don’t think so, old chap. By the look of his lungs the poor old fellow asphyxiated. Toadfish toxin destroys the nerves. The victim remains conscious while the lungs fill with fluid. Can’t cough it up—or move, so they die slowly of suffocation. Terrible way to go, really.’

  ‘I see. But can you give me a day or so to try to sort things out at our end? I’m sure there’s an innocent explanation for all of this. I’d appreciate the chance to question certain staff. Besides, it wouldn’t reflect well on the museum, having the police about the place just now, with all the fundraising that’s needed for the new gallery. I think you can trust a Christ’s College man to play with a straight bat, Leo.’

  ‘Of course, Vere. Take your time, and I’ll keep things on ice here, so to speak,’ Upton said, looking dubiously at Sopwith.

  Two hours later Giles Mordant, Archie Meek and John Jeevons found themselves standing to attention in front of the director’s desk. Vere Griffon’s eyes burned like coals. Between stroking the back of his head and staring at the ceiling, he quizzed them about the hours leading up to Sopwith’s death with all the zeal of a prosecutor who’d scented blood.

  ‘Jeevons. You saw and heard nothing on the night in question, even though you had the third watch? Is that right?’

  ‘That’s right, sir. Quiet as a mouse, the place was.’

  ‘Are you saying you saw nothing of Sopwith that night? I hope for your sake that you weren’t sleeping on the job! It will go very badly for you if you’re lying.’

  Jeevons flushed crimson.

  ‘So how in the hell did Sopwith get into the museum without alerting the guard room?’ Griffon fulminated.

  ‘I think I can help there, sir,’ volunteered Mordant. ‘I met Sopwith that night.’

  ‘Did you, Giles? Pray tell more.’

  ‘Drunk as a skunk he was, sir, if you’ll forgive the expression. He’d come up William Street, fair swaying, mumbling that he had to see Mr Meek’s collection. Said he’d heard about it from someone at the Maori’s Head, and couldn’t wait until morning.

  ‘I did tell Holdfast that if he saw Sopwith, to let him know about the seashell,’ Jeevons volunteered.

  ‘Anyway, sir,’ Mordant continued, ‘I’d been working late on the model of Piltdown man, that stone-age coot, for the new exhibition. So I walked back to the museum with him and let him in through the taxidermist’s entrance.’

  ‘The taxidermist’s entrance?’ repeated Griffon. ‘It’s the only way into the building without passing the guard room. You know, Mordant, that it should only be used for moving large mounts. And removing your, er…effluvia.’

  ‘I know, sir. But I felt sorry for the old fella. He seemed so keen to see the treasures, as he called them.’

  Archie was astonished. So Mordant had taken Sopwith back to the museum. He knew that Giles was lying about wanting to help the old man. His hatred of the curator, who frequently ordered him to clean rotting seashells, was plain for all to see. Archie got the feeling that Giles was telling the director something he wanted to hear. He thought back to that day at the Maori’s Head when Mordant had so vehemently contradicted Sopwith’s assertion that Polkinghorne’s disappearance was suspicious.

  ‘Meek,’ barked Griffon. ‘You claim that you were sorting the pickled fish you brought back, and that you went home when you finished at eight o’clock? Can you prove that?’

  ‘No, sir,’ Archie replied dismally, recalling Dithers’ absence.

  ‘The jar on which Sopwith had, let us say, quenched his thirst, contained a small coral trout, did it not? An entirely innocuous fish, I believe. But Mordant tells me that the jar was labelled “giant toadfish”. Do you think it possible, Meek, that you might have switched the fatally poisonous toad fish with the coral trout? Moreover, did you remove the toad fish’s liver before pickling it? If not, its toxins could have leached into the preserving fluid, where they would have remained until our poor deceased colleague drank it.’ Vere Griffon’s voice had become almost triumphant. ‘It would have been a simple mistake, Meek, in your tired state, to swap the fish.’

  Vere Griffon was now looking at Archie as if beseeching him to accept the explanation. But Archie was as certain as he had ever been about anything that he’d not swapped the fish, or the labels. He’d always been extraordinarily careful to keep label and specimen together. The collection would have been useless without such care. But how could he convince anybody of that? Was it possible that the yangona had addled his brain a little?

  Wearily, he conceded. ‘It could have been the case, sir. But I have no memory of it.’

  Vere Griffon’s face broke into a great smile—the first of that magnitude Archie had seen on his director.

  ‘Needless to say that none of what we’ve discussed today shall leave this room. Thank you, gentlemen. I’m sure the authorities will deal with this expeditiously.’

  And indeed Griffon was right, at least in this respect. Within days the state pathologist brought down his verdict: ‘Death by misadventure’. Despite the finding, and to Vere Griffon’s intense irritation, the worst of the city’s newspapers portrayed Sopwith’s death as a sort of Agatha Christie mystery. For a few days gossip about ‘the murder in the museum’ flourished, but then the hysteria died down and the matter seemed forgotten. Just one loose end needed tidying up. Vere Griffon made another trip to the morgue, to see his old friend, Dr Leopold Upton.


  ‘My dear fellow, thank you for handling poor Sopwith’s demise so…sensitively. It was a great consolation to us all, at this delicate time, to know that the police wouldn’t be traipsing through the place, alarming board members and donors. Not to mention staff. But I’m afraid that there’s one other thing. Sopwith’s solicitor came to see me the other day about the old man’s will. It seems that Eric wasn’t at all keen to leave the museum. In fact, it was his express wish that his skull be donated to the institution he had served for so long. I often heard him joke that the place was full of native skulls, but with “ne’er a Caledonian to be seen”, as he put it. I thought he was being morbidly jocular, but his will indicates that he meant it. The old fellow has no close kin. I suppose he thought of the museum as his home.’

  ‘Hmm. An unusual request,’ replied Upton thoughtfully. ‘Unusual, but not unheard of. Descartes’ skull, you know, resides in the Musée de l’Homme in Paris, along with those of a goodly number of curators who have served that fine institution. And, of course, in this state of New South Wales, many people donate their bodies to the university’s anatomy department.’

  ‘So donating one’s skull to a museum is possible,’ ventured Griffon, ‘in a legal sense, I mean.’

  ‘I think so. But there are practical things to consider. For example, the delicate matter of defleshing.’